Surely some context needs to be applied though? I think our budget that season was pretty unashamedly bottom 6 or so? This season, at a conservative estimate our playing budget would be top half.
Definitely the raised expectation.
If we had the squad we were shaping up with before 'The Chinese' joined in, I think it's fair to say we could have expected to finish bottom 4 (Cornell, Buchs, Moloney, Poole, Barnett, Bowditch, O'Toole, Foley, Powell, Revell, Waters).
But the raised budget increased expectations, whereas in reality, it seemingly stripped our squad of any team ethic at all. The players individually are of mostly good quality, but playing together as a team still looks a little bit like pre-season.